What Are Acceptable Compromises On Barge Canal?

The end may be near for our state's misguided pork-barrel ditch. It's encouraging that Congress is moving at last to deauthorize the Cross-Florida Barge Canal.

Work on the canal was halted in 1971 because of environmental concerns, and studies have shown that the canal cannot be justified economically. Even so, Congress has refused to kill it. Now a proposed compromise may remove the canal from the list of navigable water projects that get federal funds.

Democratic Rep. Robert Roe of New Jersey, chairman of the House Public Works and Transportation subcommittee on water resources, said earlier this month at a hearing in Palatka that Congress should do whatever is best for the water resources of Florida.

The majority of speakers at Roe's hearing, from the governor and attorney general on down, made it very clear that a barge canal was not the best use for our water resources.

The game now changes to the details, the conditions to attach to deauthorization of the canal. For instance, what about the possibility of losing lands taken in title or easement for the canal? If no more canal is built, can former owners act to buy back lands and develop more waterfront shantytowns, such as those already thriving near the Oklawaha River?

Attorney General Jim Smith says no. As long as the land was taken for public recreation and water management and will continue to be so used, state and federal land managers may hold on to it.

What compromises are acceptable to environmentalists? They probably can accept maintaining the barge canal between Jacksonville and Palatka because that area has not required much dredging. Another acceptable compromise may be retaining the canal below Dunnellon at the western end despite the salt water intrusion. But beyond those, environmentalists should be wary.

Should the Rodman Reservoir (euphemistically renamed ''Lake Ocklawaha'' with the old spelling) be retained as a further compromise? Even conservationists scrap over that one. But a few of us have more definite opinions.

The reservoir is a disaster. It was created on about 10,000 acres of river swamp, which included a portion of the Oklawaha River that was taking care of itself beautifully as it had for millions of years. Unfortunately, the Army Corps of Engineers was directed to dam it, deepen the reservoir near the dam, crush 5,500 acres of hardwood swamp into the mud and flood the swamp to make a shallow reservoir heir to all the ills we experience in urban Central Florida lakes -- water weeds, low oxygen, silt and loss of many wildlife species of particular concern.

The obvious thing is to accept a deauthorization compromise that will permit draining the reservoir to re-create a wild river system. Most of the river channel is lying quietly in wait below the reservoir; seeds and cuttings will wash down from upper reaches of the river; replanting and some management will be necessary but maybe this management will eventually bring back most of what we've lost.

Best of all, the Oklawaha might become an almost carefree natural area again. We don't have many wooded river swamps left for the benefit of future generations.

We must not allow any compromises to legitimize past mistakes. Let's go for what's best for Florida in the long run. We must not accept anything less.